How I tracked down the scammers attacking my stationery business

Pretending to be Keith, and having stolen all her social media videos, professional images and words, the scammers flooded Facebook and Instagram with convincing adverts for the calendar. Some of their posts had as many as 900,000 views.

Keith, 41, from Chiswick, west London, believes thousands of victims could have been scammed in less than two weeks because authorities and social media companies were slow to act, or did not act at all.

She believes it was the speed at which the real calendar sold out that encouraged the fraudsters, who capitalised on people searching for alternative stockists.

On September 30, two days after the calendar sold out, she received the first customer reports of copycat websites. Some people had been bombarded with fake adverts on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.

“I was effectively advertising it for them,” said Keith, who quit her job as a healthcare executive ten years ago to start her stationery business, Martha Brook. “They were using videos of me talking about our advent calendar, which looked professional and authentic, because they were.”

The adverts contained links to websites that claimed to be selling the advent calendar for £30, less than a third of the real price. Hundreds of convincing listings popped up on Amazon using all aspects of Keith’s own website.

More than 100 people have been in touch about the scam. “It is just unbelievable that these platforms are letting this happen even after it’s been reported,” Keith said. “The Amazon listings were sponsored, so [Amazon was] being paid to advertise them, as were the social media companies. I think they’re not taking them down because they’re making money from advertising the scams.”

In a conversation Keith had with a customer service agent at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, after calling to ask if the company could help, they apparently joked: “Somebody must really hate you.”

Wholesome façade

Last month Lloyds Bank warned of a huge rise in rogue retailers using fake websites to trick people into buying items that are never dispatched, driving a 200 per cent rise in card disputes in one year. The average victim lost £55.

The Martha Brook advent calendars appeared for sale on wholesome-sounding websites such as Cosyfest.com, Outdoor-happiness.co.uk, Confident-journey.co.uk, which sometimes included the whimsical backstories of their “founders”.

Outdoor Happiness, for example, said the website was run by a husband and wife called Shawn and Erin, who apparently love living in their rustic farmhouse in Texas. The accompanying photograph was actually of a New York photographer called Emma Bauso with her partner and two children.

To add insult to injury, when Keith posted a warning about the scam on her own website, the scammers copied her exact words and posted them on the copycat sites. They were following her online movements.

Keith said she struggled to persuade British authorities, including the Metropolitan Police and Trading Standards, to investigate. Instead she took matters into her own hands and appealed to her own customers to report the advertisements to her every time they saw them.

“Our amazing customers spent ages sending hundreds of fraudulent links into our database to allow us to quickly identify all the websites and adverts that were springing up,” she said. “We then sent cease-and-desist letters ourselves to each website, citing a breach of trademark and copyright, using the email address for customer services on these websites.”

Keith received no reply from these websites but, one by one, over several days, the web pages selling her advent calendars began to be removed. “It was a Whac-A-Mole situation,” she said.

She traced many of the fraudulent websites to Landbase Trading Co Ltd, which had a registered office address in Whitchurch Road, Cardiff. It had a single director, Maoyun Zhou, 73, whose correspondence address was in Qingdao, eastern China.

When The Sunday Times visited the address in Cardiff, it was occupied by medical students from the city’s university, who said they were bemused by the post they receive most days addressed to rogue businesses “from all over the world”.

A worker at a kitchen showroom below the flats, Dream Doors, said: “We used to open the mail and they always said the same thing — people were wanting to know why the goods they had ordered had not arrived and they wanted their money back. Nowadays, we just throw them straight in the bin.”

Some of the other websites advertising the calendar could be traced back to Manner Trading Co Ltd and Elite Trading Co Ltd, also run by Chinese citizens and registered to the same street in Cambridge. This address is used by hundreds of businesses, from a Russian chemicals company to an Israeli fertiliser firm.

The websites included contact details for customer services, but Keith believes this is simply a delaying tactic, potentially to prevent negative reviews being posted while the scammers continue to sell. Customers received replies saying their items were en route via places ranging from Ireland to Atlantic City and Little Rock, Arkansas.

One victim, Betsy, 44, believed she was buying the genuine advent calendar on Giftfors.com after clicking on an Instagram advert. She had seen Keith’s original advert and assumed they had restocked the sold-out calendar.

“I couldn’t purchase the set quickly enough, but within about 30 seconds, something just felt off and I felt a knot in my stomach. I realised the price was far too low [£58]. The confirmation email was a red flag, using my last name instead of my first, with multiple punctuation and grammatical errors.” She has since disputed the charges with her bank and has been refunded.

Some adverts have been taken down from Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. However, Keith said it has involved hours of slow, painstaking work, and many still remain online. More than 100 listings were still on Amazon last week.

Meta said it was continuing to investigate but had “removed some of the adverts”. TikTok said it has now removed the content for breaching its policies around intellectual property. The Metropolitan Police said it would not be investigating as there was no evidence any offences occurred in London.

From next autumn, all new directors setting up a company in the UK will need to verify their identities to prove they are who they claim to be. A spokesman for Companies House said: “We take fraud seriously and all allegations are fully investigated. Since March we have been using our new powers to crack down on the misuse of the register by querying and questioning information provided by companies.”

Keith said she had contacted Action Fraud twice and both times been rebuffed. The second time she was told she should call Citizens Advice, the consumer charity.

After being contact by The Sunday Times, a spokeswoman for Action Fraud said: “We apologise to the victim for our operatives not understanding the nature of the report. After taking steps to review what has happened, a representative from our reporting centre will get in touch with the victim to take the details of the report.”

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed it had been contacted last week and would “remove any infringing products as we continue to investigate”.

Keith added: “It’s been shocking to me how easy it is for scammers to get away with this and how scary it is for it to proliferate. I still want to encourage people to shop with small businesses, but to do their research before they buy from these sites.”

Tips to avoid being scammed this Christmas

• If you buy goods from a marketplace such as Amazon, do some basic Google searches of the specific company selling the item.
• Before you buy, type the company name into social media to see if others are complaining about them.
• If you are defrauded, contact your bank to block further payments. Some victims are charged many times.
• If you paid using a credit card you may be eligible to a refund through them under Section 79 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974.
• Check the wording on the “about us” section of the website. Fraudulent websites often use AI to generate scripts, or make grammatical errors that can provide clues.